MIL OSI Translation. Region: Italy –
Source: The Holy See in Italian
Displaced people in Manipur
by Paolo AffatatoImphal (Agenzia Fides) – “Peace and reconciliation in Manipur cannot be based on the separation of ethnic communities; they will not be achieved by building a new dividing wall on the border with Myanmar, the one that the state plans to build for over 1600 kilometres”. It is the vision of Msgr. Linus Neli, Archbishop of Imphal, capital of the Indian state of Manipur. “Peace – continues the Archbishop – will not be achieved even through the rearmament of ethnic groups, as is dangerously happening among the Kuki and Meitei communities. Peace will be achieved by reactivating dialogue, starting negotiations, proceeding on a path of equality and justice that overcomes atavistic rivalries and ethnic claims”. In an interview with Agenzia Fides, the Archbishop re-reads the crisis that has been year grips the state of north-eastern India. The Archbishop frames the issue in the ethnic and cultural configuration of the north-eastern region of India, “a region with its own specific dimension, characterized by ethnic, linguistic and cultural pluralism”. North-eastern India includes the seven states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura, as well as the Himalayan state of Sikkim, and the Jalpaiguri division, legally part of West Bengal. “It is also geographically secluded – he notes – if you consider that it is connected to the rest of the country via a narrow corridor between Bhutan and Bangladesh, the Siliguri corridor. This geographical characteristic is not irrelevant, even with respect to relations with the central government in New Delhi”, he observes. The region has often been crossed in the past by conflicts and social, ethnic and political tensions. At the time of their establishment, “the North-Eastern States – recalls the Archbishop – were created to allow their respective indigenous communities to safeguard their identity and make their specific contribution to the Indian Federation, with the particular resources of their cultural heritage. Furthermore, some tribal groups are infinitely small communities and are only now entering the highly competitive world of modern India”. Furthermore, north-eastern India is one of the regions where, overall, the concentration of citizens of the Christian faith is greatest in India: Of the approximately 27.8 million Christians in the whole of India, approximately 7.8 million are found in the Northeast region. “This also entails our responsibility in promoting peace, justice, brotherhood between people and groups of different faiths, languages, cultures and ethnic groups”, states the Archbishop. Neli then outlines the internal situation of Manipur where “there are three main ethnic groups: the Kuki, the Meitei, the Naga. Coexistence and intercommunity relations have not been easy in the past. There is a discussion about ‘who was there originally’, therefore about who can claim greater rights in social life, as the Kuki came centuries ago (starting from the 16th century, ed.) from neighboring Myanmar (where they are called Chin, ed.). The confrontation, and even the conflict, has always had a central theme: the possession of land, which is the source of sustenance and prosperity. Even today’s clash between Kuki and Meitei is no exception: it is fundamentally a clash over the land and the politics of the land”, he explains. “Geographically – always the element of geography which cannot be ignored, he is keen to say – the Meitei today hold about 10% of the land and are based in the valley where the capital Imphal is located. The other groups, Naga and Kuki, are in the hilly and mountainous areas, occupy around 90% of the territory, and are included in the list of ‘recognised tribes’.” They are those historically marginalized tribes to which the Indian Constitution recognizes specific property rights, and indicates them as recipients of specific development, education and land allocation programs. In March 2023, an order of the High Court of Manipur recommended to the central government to also include the Meitei community among the “recognized tribes” and this generated the protest which then resulted in clashes and generalized conflict. “It must be said that the Meiteis are a numerical minority but they are a political majority, controlling the local government (the Prime Minister of the state is N. Biren Singh, member of the Baratiya Janata Party, that of the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, ed.), and over the years they have carried out policies that, according to other groups, discriminate against tribals.” Added to this is the religious element, given that the Meitei are of the Hindu religion and live – an exception in India – as a minority in a state with a majority Christian population. “There has also been, in recent years, an attempt to colonize the territory by Hindu extremists”, notes the Pastor of the Catholic community of Imphal. “Among other things – he adds, providing an element that complicates the picture, which did not emerge in the mass media – the destruction of Christian chapels during the conflict is due to the religious clash within the Meitei community, which then reunited to turn to the ‘common enemy’, the Kuki”. of community and fraternity and help to see the other not as an enemy, but as a brother and sister with whom to coexist peacefully. Faith in Christ helps to bring peace and justice”. The Archbishop recounts the current situation of absolute separation, with military checkpoints between the areas inhabited by Meitei and Kuki, who cannot go to each other’s areas: ” This division, in the short term, interrupted the spiral of conflict, but it is not enough, because it has not healed the traumas and wounds (over 220 victims and 67,000 displaced persons), nor has it calmed the hatred and revenge: in fact currently all the communities they are proceeding to rearm, organizing themselves with increasingly heavier armaments. Which gives the sense of the powder keg ready to respond. And, if that were the case, with the use of those weapons, it would be an even bloodier conflict”, he notes. In this context, Archbishop Neli, who is of the Naga ethnic group, considered “neutral”, can visit the parishes in the different areas , where there are priests (76 in the diocese) who are also divided by ethnicity. “Being a Naga I can visit and comfort various communities. Some religious people and priests who come from the Indian state of Kerala (in southern India) can also do so, and therefore are not parties to the proceedings. I can say that, from my visits, I have drawn a clear will: people are hungry and thirsty for peace. It is urgent to seek and pursue a political solution with all our energies,” he says, recounting the situation of over 1,000 Kuki Catholic refugees, who have had to leave areas such as the city of Imphal, where they lived in the past. “The Catholic community is offering them assistance and sustenance and we have also built small wooden houses where they can stay,” he reports. At a political level, the Archbishop expresses doubts about the road map for solving the crisis, presented by the central government , by Interior Minister Amit Shah because “the central government has neglected Manipur and the response to the management of the violence has not been adequate, there has not been a clear political vision, while now the social, employment and economic crisis of the country is worsening ‘entire state, blocked in the stalemate of lack of communication between regions and groups, with negative consequences for businesses, schools, socio-economic activities”. Furthermore, fearing infiltration of Kuki militants from Myanmar, the government has begun to build a barrier to border that should seal a frontier of 1600 kilometres, “which means institutionalizing separations, reasoning according to the logic of division which exasperates souls and foments hatred”, he notes. Politics, adds Archbishop Neli, “should think about concrete solutions such as the possible creation of two different autonomous administrative units or – another proposal that has emerged – that the Kuki districts become a Union Territory, i.e. directly dependent on the central government. But every proposal can only start from a dialogue, from a mediation, from a negotiation, which takes into account the need to find geographical and then socio-cultural harmony”. “This process – concludes Neli – starts from a basic assumption which must be welcomed by all: recognizing the other as a ‘brother in humanity’, the ground that allows coexistence even between peoples different in language, history, ethnicity, culture, religion. For this reason we are also inspired by Pope Francis’ document ‘Fratelli tutti’, whose spirit we hope can be welcomed by Christians and non-Christians”. (Agenzia Fides 26/9/2024)
Archbishop Linus Neli
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EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is a translation. Apologies should the grammar and/or sentence structure not be perfect.